Backlash at GE
From CNN: Backlash at GE
In the last year or so, [Jeff] Immelt [the chairman and CEO of General Electric] and GE have become the unlikely darlings of the environmental movement. GE promotes solar and wind power and it agreed, at long last, to clean up toxic chemicals that it dumped into the Hudson River years ago. The company has also pledged to curb its emissions of greenhouse gases, aligning itself with those who argue that the problem of global warming is real, important and caused by man-made emissions.
So now, along with cheers from the tree-huggers, Immelt is attracting jeers from conservatives who say he has gone too far. A political activist named Steven Milloy, who runs a small mutual fund called the Free Enterprise Action Fund (FEAF), has filed a shareholder resolution asking GE to justify its policy on global warming.
Milloy is a lawyer, a columnist for FoxNews.com and former adjunct scholar at the libertarian Cato Institution who has battled environmentalists for years. He has run nonprofit groups that attack environmentalists and have received funding from Altria, parent company of Philip Morris, and Exxon Mobil, according to The New Republic magazine.
Last March, Milloy formed the Free Action Enterprise Fund, in part as a counterweight to liberal activist groups and socially-responsible investors who lobby big companies on behalf of such causes as global warming.
“I think companies should concentrate on making money, and not on changing public policy,” he says.
There’s always gotta be someone eh. Articles like this show just how hard it is for big companies to truly go green. Take the example of poor old Henry Ford who decided to cut the price of his cars and up the pay of his workers out of a sense both of fairness and of stimulating demand for his cars. He was sued successfully by his shareholders too and the judge ruled that he was free to be profligate with his own money but not that of his shareholders. What a world. - DS
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